“I did not expect to have career renaissance in my mid-50s,” says Spin City, Scrubs and Cougar Town creator/co-creator Bill Lawrence, who has four series: Apple TV+’s Shrinking and Bad Monkey, an upcoming HBO comedy starring Steve Carell, as well as Jason Sudeikis’ Apple TV+ phenom Ted Lasso which has been plotting a Season 4 return.
Add to that the long-rumored reboot of his NBC/ABC medical comedy Scrubs. In Part 1 of Deadline’s interview with Lawrence, he speaks about the Season 1 finale of Bad Monkey and teases a likely second season. Here, Lawrence addresses the status of the Scrubs revival and the prospect of more Ted Lasso as well his new series with Carell and its connection to Bad Monkey.
The main obstacle for the Scrubs follow-up has been working out an agreement with Warner Bros TV, where Lawrence is under an exclusive overall deal, for him to be able to work on the reboot as Scrubs is produced by Disney’s 20th Television.
“I think it’s getting really close to being figured out, and I think in a good way,” Lawrence said. “Big chunks of the creative team behind the camera, and most of it from in front of the camera, are all super invested and excited, so very close.”
Lawrence envisions Scrubs 2.0 as a hybrid between a revival, revisiting original characters a decade and a half after the original series ended its run, and a reboot, revamping the concept with new characters.